House Backs Silent Prayer, Use of Schools for Religious Meetings

Washington--The Democratic-controlled House approved legislation
this summer allowing public-school students to pray silently in school
at any time and to hold religiously oriented meetings during
noninstructional hours.

Action on the measures was driven largely by election-year pressures
on Representatives to make public their stance on what leaders of both
political parties are calling the traditional values, House members
acknowledged.

"We think it's important to get these people on the record,"
Representative Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi, was quoted by
news services as saying. "We're trying to show that what the Democrats
said [at their national convention in San Francisco] and how they vote
are two different things."

By endorsing the religious-meet-ings and silent-prayer measures,
Democrats "can still say we voted for prayer in the schools," said the
chairman of the party's Congressional Campaign Committee,
Representative Tony Coelho of California.

President Exerted Pressure

The measures were passed overwhelmingly on consecutive days in late
July, shortly after President Reagan accused House Democratic leaders
during a nationally televised press conference of bottling them up.

The "equal-access" legislation had been attached as a rider by the
Senate in late June to a bill authorizing a $965-million, two-year
program to improve instruction and student achievement in mathematics
and science. The House voted 393-15 to approve the Senate-amended
measure, HR 1310, without change on July 25, thus clearing it for the
President's signature.

President Reagan announced during a national radio broadcast that he
had signed the legislation on Aug. 11

The second measure, the silent-prayer proposal, was offered as an
amendment to a bill reauthorizing 11 education programs. It was
approved 356 to 50 on July 26 only after the chamber narrowly defeated
another proposed amendment that would have cut off federal funds to
schools that prevented students from saying vocal prayers. The vote on
the vocal-prayer proposal was 194-215.

After passing the bill, HR 11, House leaders first used a
parliamentary procedure to transform a Senate-approved bill, S 2496,
into an identical copy and then requested a conference on that bill
with the Senate. The White House has indicated that the President will
probably sign the measure if the confer-ence report clears both
chambers of the Congress.

Significant Differences

The prayer and equal-access measures approved by the House vary
significantly from bills defeated in the Congress last spring.

Last March, the Senate killed by a 55-to-44 vote a proposed
constitutional amendment that would have allowed vocal, organized
prayer in schools. In May, the House failed by 11 votes to pass a bill
that would have cut off federal funds for school districts that
prohibited student religious groups from meeting on school grounds
during school hours. (See Education Week, March 28 and May 23,
1984.)

The main difference between the prayer bill passed by the House and
the one defeated by the Senate is that it is not a constitutional
amendment and therefore does not have to beratified by two-thirds of
the state legislatures before taking effect. In addition, it protects
silent prayer only and does not provide for sanctions against school
districts violating its provisions.

Status Quo

A number of school-prayer supporters in and out of Congress, in
fact, have criticized its passage as doing little more that affirming
the status quo.

"I personally would rather have not seen it happen," said Gary
Jarmin, executive director of Christian Voice, an evangelical Christian
group that lobbied extensively in favor of vocal prayer.

"It accomplished little more than to give liberal Democrats a vote
to go home on," he explained.

He added that the defeat of the vocal-prayer amendment "was possibly
the best thing that could have happened."

Likewise, the equal-access measure that won approval varied
significantly from its predecessor. Unlike the earlier version, it
ensures access to all student groups, religious and secular, applies
only to meetings held during noninstructional time, and does not
provide for a funding cutoff for those districts found in violation of
it.

Tail Wags Dog

Like the tail that wagged the dog, the prayer and equal-access
amendments largely overshadowed the parent bills to which they were
attached.

HR 1310 authorizes $425 million in the current fiscal year and $540
million in fiscal 1985 for a variety of programs in the Education
Department and National Science Foundation aimed at improving the
quality of and increasing the size of the mathematics and science
teaching force.

This task would be accomplished by: providing block grants to states
for teacher inservice and retraining programs; providing scholarships
and forgivable loans to prospective teachers; establishing summer
institutes and workshops for teachers; creating a program of matching
grants to states and school districts for cooperative programs with
businesses; and by providing grants to postsecondary institutions for
research projects and teacher training.

Amendments added to the bill by the Senate would: authorize a
$75-million magnet-schools program to aid school districts undergoing
desegregation; shift responsibility for removing asbestos in public
schools from the Education Department to the Environmental Protection
Agency; and authorize $16 million in fiscal 1984 and 1985 for awards to
school districts that establish programs to carry out the
recommendations of the National Commission on Excellence in Education
and other national studies of education released in the last year.

HR 11 reauthorizes 11 education programs through fiscal 1989,
including bilingual education, Indian education, and grants to school
districts enrolling a high percentage of immigrant children.

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